Zelazny, Roger - Novel 07 (3 page)

 
          
 
He shook his head, stepped back.

 
          
 
Suddenly, it became necessary that he know the
extent of the phenomenon. He turned and headed for the door, his pace
increasing as he went. Passing through, he moved to the nearest window and
regarded the world beyond.

 
          
 
Traffic stood silent and still, birds hovered
in midflight, not a flag rippled. There was no motion to the clouds....

 
          
 
"Spooky, isn't it?" something like a
voice seemed to say. "Necessary, though. I realized at—you might say, the
last minute—that I had to talk with you."

 
          
 
Van Duyn turned.

 
          
 
A dark man, clad in green slacks and a pale
sport shirt, was leaning against the wall, left foot resting on a large black
satchel. Stockily built, wide forehead, dark eyes, heavy brows, flaring
nostrils ... He was uncertain as to the swarthy man's race or nationality.

 
          
 
"Yes," Van Duyn answered, "it
is spooky. You know what's happened?"

 
          
 
The other nodded.

 
          
 
"As I said, I wanted to talk with
you."

 
          
 
"So you stopped time?"

 
          
 
Something like laughter. Then, "Just the
opposite. I've speeded you up. You may grow extremely hungry in what seems like
the next few minutes. Just tell me when you do. I have food with me." He
hefted the satchel. "Come this way, please."

 
          
 
"You are not really talking," Van
Duyn said. "I just realized that. Your words are coming directly into my
head."

 
          
 
The man nodded again.

 
          
 
"It's this or write notes. Listen! You
can't even hear your footsteps. Sound is a trifle slow at the moment— or
rather, we are too fast for it Come on. Time is a dear commodity."

 
          
 
He turned, and Van Duyn followed him out of
the building. He took what seemed an unnecessarily long time to open the door.

 
          
 
Then he seized Van Duyn's hand and did
something with the satchel. They rose into the air.

 
          
 
Moments later, they had come to rest atop the
building. The man turned then and gestured at the East River, a piece of muddy
glass, and at the hazed and grainy sky where strands of smoke lay like bloated
things on a beach.

 
          
 
"There is that," he said. "And
here ..." He took him by the arm and led him to the other end of the roof.
". . . the city."

 
          
 
Van Duyn looked out, across the silent city
where the still cars lay at the bottom of the sea of their exhausts—pedestrians,
storefronts, flagpoles, hydrants, shrubbery, benches, signs, tangles of wire,
lightpoles, grass, a few trees and a stray cat all embedded within it. He
looked up at dark clouds, down at the play of light and shade on dingy
surfaces.

 
          
 
"What is it that you want me to
see?" he asked.

 
          
 
"There is pollution," said the
other.

 
          
 
"I am well aware of that—particularly
today."

 
          
 
". . . and power, and beauty."

 
          
 
"I can't deny it."

 
          
 
"The resolution you were about to urge be
passed ... What do you think its chances really are?"

 
          
 
"Everyone feels the voting will be
close."

 
          
 
The dark man nodded.

 
          
 
"Yet what is it basically?" he said.
"A thing which would put some pressure on those nations not party to them
to become signatory to several already existing treaties dealing with
contamination of the seas and the atmosphere. Everyone agrees in principle that
the world should be kept clean, yet there is strong resistance to the measures
proposed."

 
          
 
"But understandable," Van Duyn said.
"The wealthy, powerful nations owe their power, their wealth, their
standards of existence, to the sort of exploitation the others are now being
called upon to forgo—and the call comes just at the point when those others are
approaching a position where they can indulge in the same sorts of enterprise
and reap similar benefits. It is only human for them to feel cheated, see it as
a neo-colonial conspiracy, resist it."

 
          
 
"Only human," said the other.
"That, unfortunately, is the problem—and it is a much larger problem than
you could possibly realize. I respect you, enormously, Dr. Van Duyn, and
because of this I have decided to take this time to tell you exactly what that
word means. Human. Do you think Leakey and the others were right, that it was
East Africa where some hominid first took his thumb and got a grip on the
humanity business?"

 
          
 
"It is quite possible. We may never know
for certain, but there is evidence—"

 
          
 
"I will spare you the trouble. The answer
is yes. That is where they did it. But they were not entirely unassisted in the
matter—at that point, and at many other points far earlier in time."

 
          
 
"I do not understand...."

 
          
 
"Of course not. Your education was based
on admirable presumptions of regularity and an unavoidable eschewal of the
teleological. You are a victim of your own sound thinking. There is no way you
could have arrived at the proper conclusions, short of being told. Yet the
answer is teleological: the human race was designed to serve a particular end,
and that end is now in sight."

 
          
 
"Mad! Ridiculous!" Van Duyn said,
and the dark man gestured toward the city.

 
          
 
"Can you make things move again?" he
asked.

 
          
 
Van Duyn lowered his head.

 
          
 
"Then hear me out. Suspend judgment until
I have finished the story. Are you hungry?"

 
          
 
"Yes."

 
          
 
The other reached into his satchel.

 
          
 
"Sandwiches, wine, lemonade, chocolate,
coffee ..." He unfolded a cloth and spread the food upon it. "Eat,
and listen."

 
          
 
"Ages ago," he began, "a
particular creature was selected to develop into the dominant life form on this
planet. It was given certain breaks and certain challenges, all of which, when
utilized or overcome, marked it indelibly with particular traits as it moved
along the road to a higher sentience. Its course was directed through many of
the situations recently determined by archaeologists and anthropologists to
lead up to the hominids and beyond, to bring about the dominance of this planet
by the gregarious killer ape. It was necessary to produce a life form of this
sort which would achieve a communal existence and acquire the ability to
manipulate its environment in such a fashion as to give eventual rise to an
urban life style and an inevitable state of high industrial development."

 
          
 
Van Duyn shook his head, but his mouth was
full and he had no choice but to listen as the other went on:

 
          
 
"This was desirable solely because of the
physical alteration of the world which would come about as a by-product of such
a civilization's normal functioning. The agents of mankind's development sought
the evolution of an environment characterized by the presence of such compounds
as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, methyl mercury, fluorocarbons 11 and 12,
tetrachlo-roethylene, carbon tet, carbon monoxide, polychlo-rinated biphenyls,
organic phosphates and numerous other industrial effluents and discharges which
characterize the modern world. In short, they devised the human race as a
planoforming agent, designed and programmed so perfectly that it would not only
do this job for them, but would self-destruct when it was completed."

 
          
 
"But why?" asked Van Duyn.
"What purpose would this serve?"

 
          
 
"The human race," said the other,
"was so designed by beings from another world. I do not know what events
finally destroyed their own planet, though I can make some obvious guesses. A
few of them escaped and came here. The Earth apparently filled the bill as a
suitable world, if certain changes could be effected. There were too few of
them to set about the massive job, so they assured the development of the human
species to do it for them. They have been sleeping all this while, in stasis
chambers aboard their vessels. Periodically, one of them is awakened to monitor
the human race's progress and to make whatever adjustments may be required to
keep things moving along the proper track."

 
          
 
"Toward our destruction?"

 
          
 
"Yes. They have calculated things pretty
closely— possibly having had experience with this sort of situation before—so
that the planet becomes suitable for them at just about the point where it
becomes uninhabitable for humanity. Your purpose is to do the job for them and
expire at its completion."

 
          
 
"How could such a type of being have
evolved? I cannot understand the natural development of a creature adapted to a
planet despoiled in such a sophisticated fashion. Unless—"

 
          
 
The other shrugged. "—unless they are
some secondary species evolved on an already ruined world? Or the primary one,
struck by a fortuitous run of mutations? Or perhaps they were far enough along
in the life sciences to induce the changes to save themselves after they had
already wrecked their world? I do not know. I only know that they seek a
particular sort of post-ecological-catastrophe environment and that they are
well on their way to achieving it here."

 
          
 
"You said that they keep us under surveillance,
and make—adjustments?"

 
          
 
"Yes."

 
          
 
"This would seem to indicate that our
programming to achieve their ends is not perfect."

 
          
 
"True. For the past several thousand
years they have been keeping a much closer watch over human society than they had
previously. They have always been wary of prodigies, prophets, possible
mutations, who might redirect the course of events in undesirable directions.
Their impact could be greater now than, say, ten thousand years ago. Also,
statistically, the possibility of their occurrence has increased. Consequently,
they were much more alert during this time to stifle premature technological
developments which might have slowed or thwarted their program, and to
discourage philosophical tendencies which could have had similar effects. On
the other hand, they encouraged the opposite. For an example, they saw an
advantage in promoting the otherworldly aspects of Christianity, Buddhism and
Islam for purposes of minimizing the importance of the Earth itself. They have dealt
with hundreds of philosophers, scientific thinkers—"

 
          
 
"Dealt with?"